Plan Your Trip Times Picks

TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT

Huge Western Wildfires Spur Debate on Controls

By JAMES BROOKE

Published: September 29, 1996

EVERGREEN, Colo.—
IF Western sunsets and sunrises seemed suspiciously spectacular this summer, there was a reason. Feeding the orange glow, tons of nitrogen were released into the atmosphere by the worst wildfire season in three decades.

With a few more weeks to go in the fire season, which began in the spring, fires have charred 5.9 million acres, about the size of New Hampshire, the largest area since 6 million acres burned in 1957. This expanse of Western forest is roughly double the area of Amazon rain forest burned annually in Brazil.

''Western wildfires are becoming larger, more dangerous, more destructive and more expensive to suppress,'' Leon F. Neuenschwander, a University of Idaho fire ecologist, testified at a Congressional hearing on the problem on Sept. 12.

As of mid-September, the number of American wildfires was 82,325, only 8 percent higher than the 1995 level. But the total acreage burned was triple the 1995 level. In the Rockies, northern Plains and Pacific Northwest, the number of fires was up only slightly this year, but the acreage burned was 10 times the 1995 expanse.

Racing through national forests and national parks, these infernos have been characterized by flames shooting 250 feet high and temperatures hitting 2,000 degrees.

From Alaska to Texas, $500 million has been spent fighting wildfires this year. At the peak, in late August, 22,000 men and women worked fire lines in the West.

The impact on the forest ecology may be more lasting. In Montana, where a wildfire in the Custer National Forest charred 14,800 acres, heat reached such high levels that it destroyed seeds and sterilized the soil. In Idaho, a fire burned 22 square miles near Boise with such intensity that the oil from burned pine needles congealed in a water-repellent layer just below the soil's surface. With soil erosion expected to increase dramatically, forest workers are cutting tree trunks and laying bales of hay in an effort to protect the city from mudslides.

In some areas, like New Mexico, Arizona and Alaska, the ferocity of this year's fires is attributable in part to extreme drought conditions. But the recent methods used to control the growth of Western forests has also been blamed. In view of this summer's debacle, debate is intensifying on how to better manage these forests.

Loggers correlate today's wildfires with a Federally mandated cut in timber harvests from national forests, from a peak of 12 billion board feet a year in the 1980's to about 4 billion this year.

But environmentalists say that the problem is not the big trees but the little ones. ''Western forests used to have frequent, small fires,'' Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said on a recent visit to Denver. ''But because of fire suppression and logging of big trees, we have lots and lots of small trees.''

When white settlers arrived in the West, they found cathedral forests. Ignited by lightning or by Indians, fires swept through forests about every 15 years. Fire crawled along the forest floor, cleaning out the clutter of dead branches, shrubs and low trees.

But after World War II, a Smokey the Bear ethic took hold in the West, and total fire suppression became a national goal. Without regular low-level fires, Western forests grew dense, and massive amounts of fuel built up.

Today, when a Western forest ignites, it often explodes with a force unknown in earlier times. Racing from tree crown to tree crown, fires last longer and travel farther. This summer, 219,000 acres burned in one Idaho fire, 155,350 acres burned in a Nevada fire, and 135,000 acres burned in a Utah fire. Believing that the best way to fight fire is with fire, ecologists now talk of the West's ''fire-deprived forests.''

''Fire is a natural, healthy force,'' said Cheryl Matthews, a spokeswoman for Yellowstone National Park, where several small fires were allowed to burn this summer.

To restore fire to the forest, ecologists advocate ''prescribed burns'' -- or low-level fires that recreate the natural, cleaning effect of ancient fires. Set at times when the fire risk is low, such as the spring, these burns creep along forest floors, preventing the major crown-burning conflagrations. The United States Forest Service is steadily increasing its controlled burns, from an average of 385,000 acres in recent years to 500,000 this year, and to 1 million acres in 1998.

These prescriptive fires carry risks. If not planned properly, they can roar out of control, spreading to private property. In addition, they sometimes draw the wrath of enforcers of local air-quality standards. As the fire season continues in California, foresters face pressure to smother all fires to cut haze and smog.

So far, courts have found that agencies are not liable for prescribed fires that burn out of control and destroy private forests and buildings. To answer air-quality concerns, foresters say that low-level burns release far less nitrogen and particulates than massive infernos that burn for weeks.

''We have to address this problem within the next 20 years, or nature will have corrected it,'' Prof. Neuenschwander said, predicting an escalation of naturally caused infernos if managers do not set controlled burns.

Map of the Midwest showing the location of major fires.

Book FlightsBook A HotelRent A CarBook A CruiseBook A PackageBook An Activity